


Bathroom Break

by Imherefinally



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, F/F, Self-Harm, Skin picking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 19:25:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19482427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imherefinally/pseuds/Imherefinally
Summary: Honestly Terezi was just itching to do something. Being cooped up inside is just about the worst thing for her mental health. She’d been picking at scabs and old scars for the past two weeks, a resuscitation of an old bad habit. She just can’t seem to care, though.What’s the harm, really? Honestly it’s no big deal. Not a big deal.





	Bathroom Break

“Have you seen Rose lately?”

Kanaya asks both Vriska and Terezi, getting nothing helpful from Vriska but something from Terezi;

“I can try and find her I guess?”

“Ok, She said she was going to wash up about two hours ago, that could be a start.”

“Kk.”

Honestly Terezi was just itching to do something. Being cooped up inside is just about the worst thing for her mental health. She’d been picking at scabs and old scars for the past two weeks, a resuscitation of an old bad habit. She just can’t seem to care, though.

What’s the harm, really? Honestly it’s no big deal. Not a big deal.

Her fingers trace along the cold walls. She feels the need to smell her blood. To taste it. To feel the pain. It holds her in place, and her free hand flexes with the memory. She remembers what it feels like to break the skin. The pressure, the release. No matter how small it is she feels it just the same.

She walks up to the bathroom door, the one they use most often. It’s locked. Really Lalonde? Two hours?

“Rose!”

Nothing. The light is on though.

“Rose are you in there?”

Fuck she misses the feeling of blood under her teeth. She doesn’t do it in the dark though, always in front of a mirror. She has to see it, or smell it, she guesses. She giggles a little at her own blind joke, but it doesn’t do anything for the anxiety in her chest.

She hears Rose as if she’s far away; “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Kanaya said you said a minute two hours ago, come on, time’s up.”

She jiggles the handle.

“No! Don’t come in yet just… just give me a minute.”

What is she doing in there, jerking off? Doesn’t sound like it. She hears the water run and splash in the sink. Some walking around… yeah this is getting to be more than a minute. She needs this bathroom, damn it.

“Open up!”

“It’s not- fine.” the lock clicks from the other side of the door, “Don’t look.”

“I can’t see, stupid.”

Terezi opens the door with a playful slam, but immediately wishes she hadn’t. Rose looks… not so good?

And she seems to know this; She looks around, anywhere to avoid eye contact. Tiny little puncture marks litter her face, and small blood smears on her shoulder confirm what she was up to.

“Huh. You too?”

Rose looks up. God. The pinkness surrounding the punctures spreads much farther than it would if she were a troll. On a troll they’re almost unnoticeable. Same with scabs. It would take a major wound to be noticeable, and even then mostly because of the contrast between skin and blood. It really looks like pain on a human’s face. It looks like how it feels.

Rose feels it. Her skin is more sensitive, less calloused than Terezi’s, but there sure are scars there. They’re small, and she’s been promised that they’re invisible, but when she’s up close she sees them. And they’re loud. Impossible to ignore. To her they’re so obvious, to hear that no one can see… deep down it just doesn’t make sense.

Still, she knows that everyone can see the fresh ones. She usually tries to stall the swelling, to get away from people for a bit, just to let the marks get less obvious. Doesn’t always work but Dave doesn’t notice and the trolls don’t seem to understand.

She tries to push past, shaking her head;

“You don’t get it.”

“Wait,” Terezi puts out an arm, not to stop her, just to stall, “I think I do. What do you think I came here for?”

“To find me, or,” and she pauses, making sure to smirk softly to get Terezi to stop worrying, “usual bathroom things.”

“Huh.”

Rose wants to go but, not before she knows. Terezi’s been through a lot, and maybe she does get it. She’s never really talked to someone who got it before.

“How do you do it? I don’t see any-“

Terezi holds up her arm for Rose to see.

She could push past, get out of this weird situation, but she wants a closer look.

They’re not obvious at first, but she’s gotten better at seeing troll scars. Vriska was too insulted by the mere insinuation that her scars weren’t cool or huge so she got an extensive crash course. Terezi’s are… small, like hers. They don’t look like they were from zits but more like, tiny incisions. Claw punctures, probably. Now that she’s looking she can see older ones, littering her skin like freckles. She thought they were freckles when they first met, but never thought to ask why only Terezi had them. She goes back and corrects the assumption.

After a moment Terezi walks past Rose and up to the mirror. Rose turns, but stays put. Terezi holds up her arm, sniffs it in the mirror, and turns her head to Rose. She turns back again and leans in close, focusing on a scab that itched earlier.

Her claw hooked under it, and she savored the sting of the clinging skin beneath. In one motion she flicked it off. She gave a little show of enjoying it, just to see what Rose would do.

Rose felt a little pang of vicarious enjoyment, but mostly felt kind of gross. She hated other people seeing her like this, how could Terezi stand it?

As a tiny drop of blood collected in the mini incision Terezi moved to a small infected cut. She tore a small line and pushed the pus and whatever else out. They both let out a little sigh.

It surprised Rose. She knew how it felt, to really get one. To clear out the contaminants and replace the dull ache of an infection with the sharp pain of a cut. It felt good. It felt like a release. It felt like control in a situation when she had never felt more out of control.

It was about all these big things, but she convinced herself that it was really about one zit or another. She didn’t want to look at it, is all, or she didn’t like the pain then why inflict more?) it was about the way it looked (then why make it worse?).

Deep down she knew why she did it, she just didn’t like it.

Terezi moved down her arm. There was no pretense to what she did, why she did it. She did it to cause pain. To enjoy it. To destress. Because all her other outlets were less safe and less damaging. Because talking about it, really talking about why she needed the pain, was out of reach for now and maybe forever.

She didn’t talk about it, but she wanted people to know, to see, to ask her about it even if she would leave them frustrated.

They both understood that they did it for the same reason; they saw no other choice.

With every pretense dropped, Rose walked up to the next mirror and finished up what she wanted to do.

With the shame gone, it just hurt. It felt different, like the deep roiling shame was a necessary component to coping. She kept at it, because when she leans in close to the mirror and rests her elbows on the cold linoleum there’s not much that can stop her. She’s tried.

Terezi doesn’t try. She would rather have a soft and kind coping mechanism but she’s rooted around inside herself and all she could find are sharp edges and needle point chasms. It’s not that she’s given up, as soon as something works better she’ll move on. Just, after this one. And this one. And just one more it has to be enough it has to be…

When they’re done they feel empty, but the burning urge is gone. That’s always how it feels.

Rose turns, and when she sees herself reflected in something other than a mirror she feels overwhelming pity for both of them. She sighs, and Terezi echoes her, and she grabs a towel and runs it under cold water.

“You were just going to let them get infected again?”

“How did you know?”

“Because that’s what I was going to do.”

She wraps the towel around Terezi’s arm, and Terezi holds it there, trying to absorb the sensation of it against her skin. After a moment she turns to root around a drawer. Antibacterial cream. She puts a tiny bit on her finger and rubs it into the places Roses skin is raised and red and scabbing over.

She can’t help but notice how Rose looks at her, like no one ever thought to do this for her, like she never thought she was worth it.

The way Terezi looks at Rose… it’s a cross kind of concentration, like this is just some other task and not a huge deal to talk about or lecture about or, god forbid, get angry about. It’s nice. She smiles into her touch and Terezi pokes her nose a little too hard.

She snickers when she takes the towel off. It’s stained with dots of teal, but the swelling’s gone down.

It’s her turn for the antibiotic. Rose is gentle with it, especially because her cuts are deeper and she tries to hide it but Rose sees her wince once or twice. Baindaids work best to cover these, so she scrounges around and finds some. They’re not the right size, but whatever.

Terezi giggles as she tries to patch up a tiny puncture with a bandage the size of her fist.

“So,” Rose says, not looking up from her work, “what do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs, “it’s not like I’m going to stop any time soon.”

“Me neither. I mean, I want to, it’s just…”

A beat of silence stretches on.

“I know.”

Instead of joining the others or going their separate ways or pretending this never happened they slump to the tiled floor and rest against each other in silence.


End file.
